


(and tonight I thank the stars) as I count my lucky scars

by indoissetep



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Scars, mentions of past violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 17:42:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6293728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indoissetep/pseuds/indoissetep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finn has scars in the way that other people have holos of their families, personal possessions, and gifts from friends. He supposes they are as valid a way as any of keeping track of events in his life, of looking back and remembering both the good and the bad.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(and tonight I thank the stars) as I count my lucky scars

**Author's Note:**

> A character study written for day 1 of Finn Week (defining moments) over on Tumblr.

Finn has scars.

He has scars in the way that other people – _normal people,_ a voice in his head says – have holos of their families, and personal possessions, and gifts from friends. He supposes they are as valid a way as any of keeping track of events in his life, of looking back and remembering both the good and the bad.

He will sometimes sit on the edge of his bed, towel wrapped around his waist and skin still drying, and count them. Like maybe he’s afraid that one of them will have disappeared or that a new one will sprout inexplicably.

He has nine scars that he can see. Most of them he can trace back to their origins, even recall the pain of getting them, but not all.

There is a jagged scar that curves over his left thigh, much faded with time, though it has grown with his body. Finn doesn’t remember getting this scar. It has always been there, a permanent feature as far as his memory stretches. Whether it is a souvenir from his kidnapping by the First Order or from a time before that, he doesn’t know.

There is one on his scalp, just behind his right ear, from one of his first times getting an Order-regulated cut. He doesn’t remember how old he was, certainly no older than six. The grooming droid said he had been squirming, but Finn was sure he hadn’t, was sure he had been sitting stiffly with his hands tucked under his legs. The droid nicked his head with the electric shaver and the cut bled, and bled and bled. The young Finn, no, the young FN-2187 thought he was going to die then and there, bleeding out in front of all the other children. That was the first time in his life he thought he would die. He didn’t cry, though. At that age, he had already learned not to.

There is another scar on his scalp, on the left, near the crown of his head, from when he was ten years old and his unit had just been promoted from novices to cadets. The older cadets decided to give the newcomers a proper welcome, and by _proper welcome_ they meant beating the shit out of them. The hard heel of someone’s boot bit through his scalp and gave him his third scar – the cut bled and bled and bled, but what else was new? After the ordeal was over, their seniors announced that they had been properly initiated and could rightfully call themselves stormtrooper cadets now. Only slightly gentler hands were clapped on backs and loud chears were voiced by the older and the newer, but FN-2187 stood separate from it all. He could not bring himself to forgive and forget that quickly, nor could he, in years to come, bring himself to take part in the hazing of new cadets.

There is the scar just under his left eyebrow, a little thing, almost invisible, from a fistfight with Nines when they were both fifteen. Slip had been sick, a wet, persistant cough developed over too many nights patrolling out in the cold of Starkiller base. Nines wanted to report Slip to medical, to “get it over with” as he had said. Words could not dissuade him, so Finn was forced to use his hands. He pinned Nines against a wall, got up in his face and told him to keep his mouth shut unless he wanted to be the one ending up in medical, a threat he didn’t mean. Nines pushed back, lalshed out, and the rest of it was a bit of a blur of fists, and bared teeth and teenage aggression. At some point, Nines managed to land a blow that opened the skin over FN-2187’s eye and he, in turn, split one of his knuckles on Nines’s teeth. That was scar number five. They both ended up being assigned to double detail in sanitation for three months, but Slip never did get reported to medical and never did get decommissioned. Not in those terms, anyway.

Miraculously, Finn bears no scars from the time when he crashed like an asteroid through the atmosphere and onto the ground of Jakku. He supposes he should be thankful that the planet’s surface is mostly made up of soft sand dunes, but every fiber in his body rages against the idea of being thankful for sand.

He has a scar on each of his forearms, though, from getting dragged through a maze of corridors by a rathtar and desperately trying to hold on to any surface he could reach, sharp metal leaving long shallow scratches on his skin. That was the second time in his life Finn thought he was going to die. He was so certain he would finally meet his end inside the stinking maw of a rathtar. Then a blast door slammed closed at the perfect moment, and Rey called it “lucky”, but Finn knew better. He might have known then – though he later tried to ignore it – that he would do anything for that girl. Not out of some need to repay his debt, no, but out of a newly-forged and durasteel-strong bond, love and trust born from shared peril.

Scar number eight is the starburst on his right shoulder, the place into which Kylo Ren sunk the crossguard blade of his lightsaber. Finn felt his own flesh being cooked then, smelled the terrible stench of charred skin, but he didn’t think he was going to die. Any such thought was drowned under waves of instinct – a protective instinct the First Order could never stomp out – of adrenaline that caused everything to come into sharp focus and that made his mind almost serene. But then Ren slashed his back in half, and Finn doesn’t remember that at all, not the heat or the pain or even hitting the snow. Except that, some nights, he will jump awake, sweat-soaked and hyperventilating, his back burning like it’s being torn open once more, like the heat from Ren’s lightsaber is still curled around his spine. It takes him forever to drift back into sleep on those nights, and in those restless, feverish moments he thinks there must be a reason why he survived when his life could so easily have drained away right there on the snow, when it could so easily have ended those times before. There is a reason why his skin has stitched itself back together so many times.

Finn has scars in the same way other people have holos and gifts and mementos. His skin is a topographical map of all the places he has been, each scar an indication of the paths not taken and of the one that was taken, each one a souvenir from something that tried to but could not bend him, something that tried to but could not kill him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Comments are always appreciated!


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